Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) Sarra Cannon (best english books to read txt) 📖

get hot showers, and it tickled the side of his arm as she leaned in.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just looking at those ships and thinking about how awful it must have been to be trapped on there when all of this broke out.”

There were three ships visible in the distance now, and Noah assumed it had to be part of what Parrish had said earlier. How cruise ships had been quarantined in the early days and forced to stay at sea. These ships must have just been wandering out here for the past month or two with no one still alive on board.

“There are horrors like that happening all over the world,” she said. “We have to try not to focus on that. Instead, we focus on what we can do about it. If David is right, we can put an end to this soon. I dreamed of the island again last night. I think it’s close.”

“I do, too,” he said. “I’ve been thinking that after we get David and Zoe out of the city, we should try to head straight there on the boat. The sooner, the better.”

“I agree. And once we’re on the water, it will be nearly impossible for the Dark One to reach us.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said, though he didn’t think it was good to underestimate or make any assumptions about what the Dark One was capable of.

“Come on, let’s get downstairs,” she said. “I think Crash wanted to go check the nearby houses for phones and computer gear.”

He nodded. “You go on down,” he said. “I’m going to hang out up here for a few minutes and just take a breath.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Parrish asked, tilting her head to study him.

“I just need some time to think,” he said.

She squeezed his arm. “Okay, I’ll see you downstairs.”

Noah stared out at the cruise ships, feeling restless, as if time was slipping away faster than any of them realized.

Twenty-Seven

Parrish

The day couldn’t go by fast enough.

Parrish was anxious to hear from David and Zoe again. They were so close now, she couldn’t bear the thought of anything going wrong at this point.

The whole group had gathered together in the living room, waiting for David to reach out to them and let them know what his searching had produced today. Parrish had the fatalis stone clutched in her hand, and she kept turning it around and around, touching each of the symbols and wondering if they’d chosen these for themselves or if someone else had carved them into this stone.

“Stop fidgeting,” Karmen said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“I can’t help it,” Parrish said. “I just want to know they’re okay.”

“I honestly believe if anything happened to David, we’d know,” Crash said. “The closer we get to each other, the more I can feel his energy. And my own. If he’s fine, I’m sure Zoe is fine, too. We just have to be patient.”

Easy for him to say. It wasn’t his ten-year-old sister sitting in the most dangerous city in the country.

But he was right about David. Parrish was sure the buzz of extra energy running through her these past few days had a lot to do with how close they were to finally becoming a group of five again.

Also, David had sensed it when she was in trouble and being held by that silver zombie back at the compound. He’d felt her panic and fear. If something had happened to him and Zoe, all of them should have felt it.

She took a deep breath in and let it go slowly, releasing the fear and just being present to the moment.

They were lucky, really.

They’d had the odds stacked against them from the beginning of this mess, and yet they’d managed to find each other. Zoe had managed to stay alive, and better yet, David had found her just before the Dark One got to her.

If their luck continued, maybe this whole thing could be over in a few more days. All they had to do was get through New York and find that island. Then the Dark One would be sealed in tight for another hundred lifetimes.

But what if their luck didn’t continue?

What if the Dark One went free before they had a chance to get to the island and reseal the world?

Like she said when she’d held Parrish there by the bus at the compound, they’d never actually defeated her. If they’d been able to do that, she would have been dead, not sealed away.

How powerful did a witch have to be to take on all five of them at full strength and still survive?

Parrish shuddered just thinking about it.

They simply couldn’t let her go free. That was all there was to it.

Crash stood and headed toward the kitchen.

“Hey, where are you going? They should be reaching out any second,” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, disappearing into the downstairs bedroom.

Parrish took another deep breath. Okay, so she was maybe losing her patience a little too easily. There were going to be delays and hardships coming up. She needed to chill.

But when David’s voice came into her head, she called out for Crash to move his butt.

“Coming,” he shouted, running into the room and jumping over the couch to join them around the coffee table.

He placed an iPad he’d gotten from a group trip to raid some of the nearby houses this afternoon on the coffee table and pressed record on the video camera app.

They all took hands and Parrish placed the stone in the center of the group, calling up David’s image as if he were there in person.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you again,” Parrish said. “How’s Zoe?”

“I’m good,” Zoe said. “It’s boring here, but we’ve been doing puzzles to pass the time. It’s not so bad, but I miss TV.”

Parrish had to laugh at that. Zoe had always been in rehearsals. She’d barely ever watched any TV at all, and when she did, their parents limited it